#DailyDevotion You’re Going Into The Promised Land Because They’re So Bad Not Because You’re So Good.
October 10th
Read Deut 9:1–22
Deu 9:1-6 “Hear, O Israel: you are to cross over the Jordan today, to go in to dispossess nations greater and mightier than you, cities great and fortified up to heaven, (2) a people great and tall, the sons of the Anakim, whom you know, and of whom you have heard it said, ‘Who can stand before the sons of Anak?’ (3) Know therefore today that he who goes over before you as a consuming fire is the LORD your God. He will destroy them and subdue them before you. So you shall drive them out and make them perish quickly, as the LORD has promised you. (4) “Do not say in your heart, after the LORD your God has thrust them out before you, ‘It is because of my righteousness that the LORD has brought me in to possess this land,’ whereas it is because of the wickedness of these nations that the LORD is driving them out before you. (5) Not because of your righteousness or the uprightness of your heart are you going in to possess their land, but because of the wickedness of these nations the LORD your God is driving them out from before you, and that he may confirm the word that the LORD swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. (6) “Know, therefore, that the LORD your God is not giving you this good land to possess because of your righteousness, for you are a stubborn people.
The Israelites were a messed up group of people. Yet the Lord was going to destroy the people of the land and give it to the Israelites because the people of the land were so sinful. Abraham, Isaac and Jacob had preached to these people and 450 years later they were worse than ever. Some of these people were great and tall and more numerous. The Lord promised though that we would go before the Israelites to destroy and subdue these people.
The Israelites were not to become haughty about this. God wasn’t giving them the land because they were so much more righteous and holy than these people in their lives. They were not to think too highly of themselves. The Lord God was dispossessing these people of the land solely for their sins. Moses reminds the history of the iniquity of the Israelites since the Lord delivered them from the Egyptians. It isn’t a pretty picture.
The Lord God was giving this land to the Israelites because He chose Abraham from all people of the earth to give to his descendents. He made a promise to the patriarchs and He was going to fulfill his promise.
In similar fashion, Jesus is going to dispossess the people of this world and cast them into the lake of fire to be punished for all eternity. His creation preached His existence and they worshipped creation rather than the creator. More than that, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, the Israelites, the prophets and the Church over millennia the good news of repentance and forgiveness of sins for the sake of Jesus Christ, His suffering, death and resurrection. And they have rejected this message.
Now you are have been baptized into Christ and delivered from sin, death and the power of the devil should also not be haughty. God did not choose you because you were so hot but because you were not. In fact He grants repentance and faith to some of the most miserable lot of humanity to demonstrate His great mercy and grace. Chief of sinners is our confession about ourselves. Faith, grace, mercy, forgiveness, love and kindness we do not deserve. They are pure gifts of God on account of Jesus and His merits.
Lord Jesus Christ, ever give us thankful hearts for granting us mercy and help us to be merciful to those who do not have faith in you yet. Amen.